Democracy, power, and intervention in Latin American political life Book

This book is in essence about our need to disagree well, which is the mark of a healthy democratic society. Yet that is the thing we seem unable and unwilling to do, thus democracy today is “on trial.” This book is a very humane and learned set of academic reflections and arguments about the public virtues and ideals citizens must share if we are going to make it as a democratic society, and names some of the ways the left and the right today seem committed to doing just the opposite. Some will attack the book due to Elshtain’s conservative (classical liberal) intellectual tradition, but I think that’s a pretty lame assessment of this fair and challenging book. There’s plenty for every truth-seeking citizen, left or right, to agree, and hopefully, disagree, with.